Tuesday Sep 17, 2024
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
POWERHOUSE Arena
28 Adams Street (Corner of Adams & Water Street across from the Archway)
Brooklyn , NY
11201
About the Book.
In David McConnell’s The Beads, members of a wealthy New York family begin to unravel after having wasted their incredible fortune over more than a century. The patriarch gets lost in a maze of his own neuroses. The mother luxuriates in a life of idle pleasure. The neglected son, Darius, nurses an obsession with his ultra-normal best friend, Barry. As if that weren’t enough, a teacher whom the boys share obliviously commits a shocking crime.
Years later, Darius has traded responsibility for an escape to Europe, where he gets a much-needed lesson in decency from a kind German aristocrat. Meanwhile, Barry stumbles into a father/son relationship with a philandering lawyer who may actually be his biological father.
Once shielded from the real world by privilege, McConnell’s fragile characters tally what they owe others and what they dream they’re owed themselves as time passes indifferently for everyone, beat by beat like the telling of a rosary. Set against a backdrop of late nineties’ Manhattan, The Beads boldly pierces the armor of old money and tries to locate love, if it even exists amid the tangled affectations of a great city.
About the Author.
DAVID McCONNELL is the author of American Honor Killings: Desire and Rage Among Men (Akashic, 2013), which won the 2014 American Library Association Award for Non-Fiction. His other novels include The Firebrat (Attagirl, 2003) and The Silver Hearted (Akashic, 2010). His short fiction and journalism have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, including Granta and Between Men. He lives in New York City.
About the Moderator.
PATRICK RYAN is the author of the novel Buckeye (forthcoming from Random House in 2025). His short story collection, The Dream Life of Astronauts, was named one of the Best Books of the Year by the St. Louis Times-Dispatch, LitHub, Refinery 29, and Electric Literature, and was longlisted for The Story Prize. His debut collection of linked short stories, Send Me, was selected for Barnes & Noble’s Discover New Writers program. His writing has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, the anthology Tales of Two Cities, and elsewhere. He is also the author of three novels for young adults. The former associate editor of Granta and the current editor-in-chief of One Story, he lives in New York City.